Canadian coalition fights Linux licence plan, Aug 21, 2003

The Canadian Linux Interests Coalition, organized by members of Canada's network of Linux Users Groups, says it plans to fight the SCO Group, which holds certain patents on the Unix operating system. The company claims that the Linux kernel — the core of the system — contains programming code that it owns, and seeks to collect royalties on installations of Linux.

When Novell announced its purchase of the desktop Linux company Ximian two weeks ago, it was one of the biggest stories to come out of LinuxWorld Expo. The move was significant and intriguing, since Novell didn't buy software, per se, but instead bought into ideas that could prove pivotal to its future.

Webmaster's note: At the time of the posting of this article here at Linux.org, 15:50 UTC, Netcraft was still showing www.microsoft.com running Linux

A Microsoft spokeswoman said the company "respects the fact that [its partners and vendors] may have diversified business models and operate in mixed IT environments. Microsoft's main concern is doing whatever it takes to help ensure customers can get to the Blaster worm patch to protect their computers.... Microsoft is using Akamai's extensive worldwide network to distrubte the massive traffic that is illegally being directed at Microsoft by hackers."

So, why this letter? Well, I would like to make it easier for you folks to know where to find another Linux user if you still are running your protection racket. The office address for SSC is in your copy of Linux Journal (I know there are people at SCO that get Linux Journal).

McBride said SCO was likely to be selective about who it targets, probably choosing a company using IBM Corp's AIX and Dynix operating systems as well as Linux, so it can settle several legal arguments in one go. "Instead of doing mass-mailings we're now taking a very targeted approach," he said.

eWEEK: For its part though, SCO has said that there are so many lines of code, and a variety of applications and devices that use that code, that simply removing the offending code would not be technically feasible or possible and would not solve the problem. Do you agree?

Torvalds: They are smoking crack. Their slides said there are [more than] 800,000 lines of SMP code that are "infringing," and they are just off their rocker. The SMP code was written by a number of Linux people I know well (I did a lot of the SMP IRQ scalability myself, personally), so their claims are just ludicrous. And they claim they own JFS [journaled file system technology] too. Whee. They're not shy about claiming ownership of other people's code—while at the same time beating their breasts about how they have been wronged. So the SCO people seem to have a few problems keeping the truth straight, but if there is something they know all about, it's hypocrisy.

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